John Tyler 

Tenth President of the United States 



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AN ADDRESS BY 



ARMISTEAD C. GORDON 





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Monument 

To 

PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER 

Erected by Congress 
In Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, 1913 



John Tyler 

Tenth President of the United States 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

ARMISTEAD C. GORDON 

At the dedication, October 12, 1915, 
of the Monument erected by Congress 
in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, 
Va. , in memory of President Tyler 



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Committee on Dedicatory Ceremonies 



HENRY C. STUART 
Governor of Virginia 

GEORGE AINSLIE 
Mayor of Richmond 

LIEUT.-COL. J. P. JERVEY 
United States Army 

WM. H. ADAMS 
President Board of Aldermen 

R. L. PETERS 
President Common Council 

BARTON H. GRUNDY 

Member Board of Aldermen 

FRED. H. POWELL 

Member of Common Council 

EDGAR B. ENGLISH 

Member of Common Council 



Ceremonies 



Parade Maj. W. McK. Evans, Chief Marshal 

Capitol Square to Hollywood 



ORDER OF EXERCISES AT THE MONUMENT 
His Excellency Henry C. Stuart, Governor of Virginia, Presiding 

Invocation Rt. Reverend Robert A. Gibson 

P. E. Bishop of Virginia 

Remarks Hon. John Lamb 

Patron of the Bill in Congress for the erection of the monument 

Mvsic— America Coast Artillery Band 

Fort Monroe, Va. 

Address Hon. Armistead C. Gordon 

Music— .^hW Lang Syne Coast Artillery Band 

Fort Monroe, Va. 

Unveiling of the Monument Mrs. Pearl Tyler Ellis 

Only surviving daughter of President Tyler 

Presidential Salute Richmond Howitzers 

Music— TA^ Star Spangled Banner Coast Artillery Band 

Fort Monroe, Va. 

Benediction Rt- Reverend Collins Denny 

Bishop M. E. Church, South 



An Account of the Action of the Congress 

of the United States in Providing 

This Monument 



BY AN act approved March 4, 191 1, Congress authorized the erection 
of a suitable monument over the grave of the late John Tyler, 
former President of the United States, in Hollyw^ood Cemetery, 
Richmond, Va., and, by an act approved August 24, 1912, an appropriation 
of $10,000 was made for the purpose, provided that no part of the amount 
so appropriated should be expended until the Secretary of War was satis- 
fied of the existence of a responsible legal association for the care and 
maintenance of the monument, and provided further, that when the said 
monument was erected, the responsibility for the care and maintenance 
of the same should be with such association, and without expense to the 
United States. In pursuance of this law, the Hollywood Cemetery Com- 
pany agreed to take charge of the Tyler lot in Hollywood Cemetery as 
soon as the monument it was proposed to have placed in the lot was com- 
pleted, and to keep the lot in perpetual care, having full regard to its 
sightly and respectable appearance, as is done in all other lots in said 
cemetery that are under the perpetual care of said company, it being 
understood that the responsibility for the care and maintenance should be 
without expense to the United States. 

The Secretary of War, under date of November 26, 1912, directed the 
Chief of Engineers, United States Army, to select an officer of the corps 
of engineers. United States Army, to take charge of the construction of 
the monument, the advertising for bids and designs, conducting all neces- 
sary correspondence regarding design of monument and the inscriptions, 
and the disbursing of the appropriation made by the sundry civil act ap- 
proved August 24, 1912, for the construction of the monument. 

In accordance with the orders of the Secretary of War, the Chief of 
Engineers, United States Army, under date of December 10, 1912, desig- 
nated the district engineer officer at Norfolk, Va., to carry out the instruc- 
tions given. 

On December 16, 1913, competitive designs for the monument were 
invited by the Secretary of War, and, as a result of this competition, and 
on the recommendation of the Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, 
D. C, the design submitted by The T. F. McGann & Sons Company, of 
Boston, Mass., was accepted. 



A contract was entered into with the successful competitors, which 
was approved by the Chief of Engineers on June 23, 1914. The erection of 
the monument was completed on June 9, 191 5. 

The following is the sculptor's description of the monument : 

"Essentially the monument will consist of a monolithic granite shaft 
rising from a granite pedestal, before which will be placed a bronze bust 
of the President, and surmounting which will be a bronze finial. 

"The bronze finial will be visible from a considerable distance and as 
it is seen to consist of a Greek urn supported between the spread wings 
of two American eagles, it will indicate at once the burial place of a man 
of national character. 

"Upon a closer approach an heroic bronze bust of the President will be 
observed resting in a dignified manner upon a pedestal of the monolith 
after the excellent manner of the ancient Greek sarcophagi. 

"On each side of the monolith there will be a bas-relief, the one being 
a hfe-sized figure of the Republic with a shield bearing the seals of the 
United States and of the State of Virginia, significant of his relations with 
the national government and his native State. The other will be a draped 
female figure representing memory, holding in one hand a laurel wreath 
and cultivating with the other the young tree of the RepubHc, which during 
Tyler's administration began to grow and expand in an exceptional manner. 

"The four faces of the monolith will be panelled as indicated on the 
model and especially will the one on the rear be suitable for an inscription." 





PRESIDENT oftlie UNITED STATES 



JOHN TYLER 



WE ARE gathered together to do honor to a great 
man, and to dedicate to his memory this monument, 
erected by the government of his country, that he 
served with unexcelled fidelity and patriotism. John Tyler, 
tenth President of the United States, was born at the home of 
his father, "Greenway," in Charles City County, Virginia, on 
March 29, 1790. He came of a distinguished line of Vir- 
ginians, and all his earlier ancestors of the Tyler name held 
places of significance in their communities, as justice of the 
county bench, or sheriff, or coroner. 

John Tyler, the President's great-grandfather, who died 
about 1727, was a justice of James City County; John Tyler, 
his grandfather, who died in 1773, was marshal of the Vice- 
Admiralty Court, and his father. Judge John Tyler, not only 
occupied a prominent position as Judge of the General Court, 
but he was also Speaker of the House of Delegates of the 
General Assembly, Governor of the Commonwealth, and at 
the time of his death in 181 3, at the age of sixty-five, Judge of 
the United States District Court of Virginia. 

The earliest of President Tyler's progenitors in the colony 
was Henry Tyler, who is first mentioned in the York County 
records in 1645 j ^"d his son Henry, who was himself justice, 
sheriff, and coroner in succession, was the father of John 
Tyler, the President's great-grandfather. It is interesting to 
observe that since the immigrant, Henry Tyler, the line has 
been one "native and to the manor born," and that in no in- 
stance, down to the present generation, have they had their 

II 



homes elsewhere than in that notable section of Colony and 
Commonwealth that has been not inaptly designated as "The 
Cradle of the Republic." 

John Tyler, the marshal of the Vice-Admiralty Court, mar- 
ried Anne Contesse, only daughter of Dr. Lewis Contesse, a 
French Huguenot physician, who lived and practised his pro- 
fession in Williamsburg during the first quarter of the eigh- 
teenth century; and it is doubtless to the blending of the Gallic 
sprightliness of Contesse with the English steadiness which 
characterized the Tylers, that the remarkable talents of the 
descendants of this union may be attributed. 

Not only has the line of the Tylers since illustrated these 
talents, but also that of Bouldin in the persons of the descend- 
ants of Judge Tyler's sister, Joanna, who married Major Wood 
Bouldin, and was mother of Thomas Tyler Bouldin, M. C, 
James Wood Bouldin, M. C, and Lewis Contesse Bouldin, 
long a State Senator; and who was also the ancestress of 
Wood Bouldin, late Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals 
of Virginia, and of Powhatan Bouldin, writer and author of 
"Home Reminiscences of John Randolph of Roanoke." This 
mingled strain is further distinguished in the talents and abil- 
ities of the descendants of President Tyler's sister, Maria 
Henry, who married John B. Seawell, and was mother of two 
brilliant lawyers of the Commonwealth, John Tyler Seawell 
and Machen Boswell Seawell, and grandmother of Miss Molly 
Elliott Seawell, the novelist. 

But save the President himself, none of the descendants 
of John Tyler, the Marshal, and his wife, Anne Contesse, 
achieved or deserved a larger fame than did their son, 
Judge John Tyler. He was the personal friend of Thomas 
Jefferson and of Patrick Henry, and was imbued with their 
principles of republican constitutional government. Jefferson 
said of him that he was "a veteran patriot who, from the first 
dawn of the Revolution to this day, has pursued unchangeably 

12 



the same honest course" ; and it is worthy of observation that 
the Sage of Monticello should have thus emphasized in the 
father the characteristic of consistency, which was one of the 
most noticeable traits in the career of Judge Tyler's distin- 
guished son. 

Mr. Henry's admiration for Judge Tyler was marked. 
Judge Spencer Roane wrote to William Wirt that "Mr. Henry 
was very fond of John Tyler as a warm-hearted patriot and 
an honest and sensible man" ; and Roane himself, who adorned 
with conspicuous ability and learning the bench of the Supreme 
Court of the State, said of Judge Tyler that "his understand- 
ing was of the highest order," and that he "was plain in his 
appearance, for his great soul disdained the tinsel of pomp and 
parade, and was intent only on virtue." Henry Clay said of 
him on the floor of Congress that "a purer patriot or more 
honest man never breathed the breath of life" ; while the Gen- 
eral Assembly of his native State resolved of him that he was 
"a venerable patriot of the Revolution, a faithful and able legis- 
lator. Judge and Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth, a 
man of fixed and undeviating integrity, yet endeared to his 
friends by every softer virtue." 

Judge Tyler had been in his youth a student at the College 
of William and Mary, and in company with Mr. Jefiferson he 
had heard Patrick Henry's speech on the Stamp Act, and had 
felt his patriotism kindled by the orator's voice and words. 
His antagonism to the British Government and his intolerance 
of its acts of oppression toward the Colonies became so earnest 
and outspoken that his father was accustomed to predict of 
him that he would be "hung as a rebel." He served on the 
Committee of Safety for Charles City County in 1774, and he 
joined Henry's troops, with the local company, of which he 
was captain, when Dunmore removed the powder from the 
magazine at Williamsburg. The Convention of 1776 made 
him Judge of Admiralty; but his eager patriotism impelled 
him to larger activities than those of the bench, and in 1778 

13 



he became a member of the Legislature. Here he served with 
abihty and fidehty successively as chairman of the committee 
of justice, of the committee of the whole, and as Speaker. 
His fame as a statesman rests on his steady support in the 
Legislature of the military and financial measures of the 
American Revolution and of the Jeffersonian reforms during 
his incumbency of the office of Speaker, on his authorship of 
the resolutions for the Annapolis Assembly of 1786, on his 
stalwart opposition in the Virginia Convention of 1788 to the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution because it permitted the 
continuance of the slave-trade, a measure that was fastened on 
the country by the votes of four New England and two South- 
ern States of the Union ; and on his services as a member of the 
judiciary, and as Governor of the Commonwealth. 

His gubernatorial term began on December i, 1808, a 
notable year in tlie history of Virginia, as being that which 
saw the abolition by England of the African slave trade, which 
Governor Tyler had so strenuously opposed in the Constitu- 
tional Convention of 1788. His administration of the high 
office of Governor was marked by the simplicity of his manners 
and conduct, by the fidelity and uprightness with which he 
discharged his duties, and by his continual enjoyment in an 
unusual measure of the confidence, respect, and esteem of his 
constituents. His term expired in January, 181 1, and during 
its continuance, under the influence of one of his messages to 
the General Assembly, on the subject of education and 
the schools, was established, through the legislative activities 
of James Barbour, of Orange, a successor in office of Governor 
Tyler, the still existing Literary Fund of Virginia. 

Judge Tyler's career on the bench was characterized by 
the same diligent attention to business, uprightness of purpose 
and intelligent discharge of duty, that adorned all of his public 
life. He had studied law for some years under Robert Carter 
Nicholas, a distinguished jurist and patriot of Judge Tyler's 
youth, whose name and fame were preserved and enchanced in 

14 



the lives of his four sons, of whom it has been said : "No Vir- 
ginia family contributed more to Mr. Jefferson's personal suc- 
cess than the powerful family of the Nicholases — powerful 
in talents, powerful in probity, powerful in their numbers and 
union. On every page of Mr. Jefferson's political history the 
names of George, John, Wilson Gary, and Philip Norborne 
Nicholas are written." 

Having obtained his license, he practised for a time in James 
City Goimty, and in 1772 removed to Gharles Gity Gounty. He 
was Judge of the Admiralty Gourt in 1776, and again in 1786, 
becoming by virtue of the latter appointment a Judge of the 
first Supreme Gourt of Appeals of Virginia. Upon the abo- 
lition of the State Admiralty Gourt by the operation of the new 
Federal Constitution, he was elected in 1788 a Judge of the 
General Gourt, in which office he continued for tw'enty years. 
During his occupancy of the State bench, he contributed to 
the jurisprudence of the country his notable opinion in the case 
of Kamper vs. Hawkins,* in which he maintained the authority 
of the constitution over legislative enactment, and thereby 
aided in the establishment of the principle in America. 

In 181 1, upon the expiration of his term as Governor, 
Judge Tyler was appointed, by President Madison, Judge of 
the District Gourt of the United States for the State of Vir- 
ginia. Jefferson, with grim political enmity to his kinsman, 
John Marshall, doubtless had a sardonic pleasure in breaking 
through his established rule : "Never to solicit an appointment 
from the President," by asking in a letter of glowing enco- 
mium the elevation to the district bench of the able and in- 
domitable Tyler, wath whom the Ghief Justice would sit in 
holding the Circuit Court. He wrotef of him to ]\Ir. Madison 
as the only man in Virginia capable of maintaining his own 
with Judge Marshall : "It wall be difficult to find a character of 
firmness enough to preserve his independence on the same bench 



* I Virginia Cases, p. 20. 

t Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, IX, p. 275. 

15 



with Marshall. Tyler, I am certain, would do it" ; and his 
opinion was verified in Judge Tyler's successful contention 
against the principle of a universal common law jurisdiction 
for the Federal Courts, that was favored by his colleague. 

Judge Tyler was an earnest and patriotic supporter of the 
War of 1812 with Great Britain, and decided the first prize case 
arising out of the war. He held the office of District Judge 
until his death at "Greenway," Charles City County, Va., Jan- 
uary 6, 18 1 3, and died with the expression of his regret that he 
"could not live long enough to see that proud British nation 
once more humbled by American arms." 

Judge Tyler married Mary Armistead, only child of Robert 
Booth Armistead, of York County, Va., a descendant of 
William Armistead, immigrant to the Colony from Kirk 
Deightou, in Yorkshire, England, who was also a progenitor 
of President William Henry Harrison, and the two Whig 
candidates of 1839, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," were cousins 
sprung from a common Armistead ancestor. 

John Tyler, the President, was the second son of the mar- 
riage of Judge John Tyler and Mary Armistead. His earlier 
education was obtained in an "old field school," taught by a 
tyrannical Scot named McMurdo; and the story is told that 
the future President, at the precocious age of eleven, was one 
of the leaders in a rebellion of the pupils against their master. 
The dominie was an admirer of John Tyler, and when he saw 
him participating in the attempt of the boys to lock him up, 
he exclaimed, after the manner of Scots dominies, "Et tu. 
Brute!" and surrendered. But his regard for the boy did not 
prevent Mr. McMurdo from reporting his son's conduct to 
Judge Tyler, who countered on the pedagogue's apt Latin 
quotation by another, since become scarcely less classic, and 
replied, "Sic semper tyrannis!" 

In 1807, young Tyler graduated at William and Mary Col- 
lege, which with its roster of statesmen and lawyers, and 

16 



soldiers, had long been a nursery of greatness. He then studied 
law for two years under Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State 
under Washington, and son-in-law of Robert Carter Nicholas, 
his father's distinguished law preceptor. His father had been 
a student at William and Mary when Mr. Jefiferson was study- 
ing law in Williamsburg under the eminent jurist, George 
Wythe, and from him the son early imbibed, and continued to 
cherish and maintain throughout his life the republican princi- 
ples of JefTersonian democracy. It was with him a fundamental 
tenet, that the union of the States constituted in effect the 
concert of two nations, differing in institutions, in occupations, 
in religion, and in manners, each from the other, and that the 
only sure method of preventing separation or war was in the 
maintenance and preservation of the rights of the constituent 
States. This remained his political guiding-star through his 
career, and by its light must that career be tested and judged. 
He held that the activities of the Federal Government should 
be kept in most things very far apart from those of the States ; 
that they should be confined chiefly to those foreign relations 
that involved the action and conduct of a central power, while 
they interfered as little as possible with the internal and domes- 
tic affairs of the country. 

Sprung from the struggle of antagonistic interests and 
passions, the Federal Constitution was full of trouble for the 
future ; and it was the aggressive assertion of the national prin- 
ciple by the North in derogation of this principle held by Mr. 
Tyler, that stirred the fires of nullification in 1832, and kindled 
the mighty conflagration of secession and war in 1861, which 
came near resulting in that permanent disruption which he 
apprehended, and so long sought to avert. 

It is in the profound recognition of this great fundamental 
characteristic of President Tyler's political creed that the key 
to his political history is to be fovmd. Believing as he did in 
the basic idea that the Union of North and South — a union 
that from the beginning was socially and economically incon- 

17 



groiis — could only be maintained through State-Rights, Mr. 
Tyler was, as circumstances developed, first a Democratic- 
Republican, and when that party broke up in 1824-1828 a 
State-Rights Democrat, and when the Jackson and Van Buren 
nationalists in the Democratic party obtained control of it and 
as a consequence the Whig party was formed, a Whig who 
agreed with the State-Rights Democrats on state-rights and dif- 
fered from nationalist Democrats on nationalism. After all is 
said, there was never for him a shadow of variableness or turn- 
ing from the great doctrine of State-Rights, which was a very 
part of himself. His attitude was never a change of position, 
but a natural alignment with parties as they successively de- 
veloped. 

In 1809, two years before attaining his majority, the young 
graduate of W^illiam and Mary was admitted to the bar; and 
had already entered upon a good practice, when in 181 1 he was 
elected to the General Assembly. Here he was a firm sup- 
porter of Mr. Madison's election ; and at an early stage of his 
service, he became prominent as an eloquent and persuasive 
speaker. The question of the recharter of the Bank of the 
United States was a burning political issue of the times, as it 
continued to be for many years. William B. Giles and Richard 
Brent, the Senators from Virginia, ignored the instructions of 
the Virginia Legislature, and favored in 181 1 the recharter of 
the bank. In January, 18 12, Mr. Tyler introduced a resolu- 
tion censuring these Senators, taking then the two positions 
from which he never deviated, first that the act creating the 
bank was in violation of the Federal Constitution, and, second, 
that the legislature of a State had the right to instruct its 
senators in Congress, whose duty it was to obey such instruc- 
tions or to resign. 

It is not without interest to note that it was Mr. Benjamin 
Watkins Leigh who drew the instructions of the Virginia Leg- 
islature to the Senators ; and that Mr. Tyler was the author of 
its resolution of censure : for subsequent events, growing out of 

18 



these two resolutions, serve to illustrate the latter's steady ad- 
herence to what he conceived to be a principle. When Benton 
offered his famous "Expunging Resolution" in the United 
States Senate, Mr. Leigh and Mr. Tyler were Senators from 
Virginia. The Virginia Legislature instructed these Senators 
to support the "Expunging Resolution." Both refused to 
obey, but Mr. Tyler's refusal was accompanied by his regis- 
nation. 

On the 20th of March, 1813, Mr. Tyler married Miss 
Letitia Christian, daughter of Robert Christian, of New Kent 
County, Va. "This marriage," it was said, "united the house 
of Democracy in the bridegroom and the house of Federalism 
in the bride" ; but the new house was Democratic. 

Robert Tyler, a son of this marriage, was distinguished as 
poet, politician, and orator. He was clerk of the Supreme 
Court of Pennsylvania, and chairman of the Democratic party 
in that State, register of the Treasury of the Southern Con- 
federacy, and at the time of his death, in 1877, was editor of 
the Montgomery Mail and Advertiser. 

A few weeks after his marriage, Mr. Tyler left his home 
at the head of a militia company to assist in the defense of 
Richmond, then threatened by the British ; but his command 
was not called into action, and his military service was con- 
cluded after a month. 

Mr. Tyler was re-elected annually to the Legislature until 
181 5, when he was elected a member of the Executive Council, 
and the next year, when a vacancy occurred in his congres- 
sional district, he was chosen for the unexpired term. Lie was 
again elected to Congress for two successive terms, and early 
in his career became conspicuous as a strict constructionist. 
He opposed Mr. Calhoun's bill for internal improvements by 
the Federal Government, on the grounds of unconstitutionality, 
and of lack of uniform application; he antagonized the enact- 
ment of a national bankrupt law ; and he made a great speech 



19 



against the bank, and to the circulation of this speech in his 
district he attributed his first re-election to Congress without 
opposition. 

His views on slavery were those of his father, who had 
voted in the Convention of 1788 against the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution largely on the ground that it permitted the 
continuance of the slave trade. In the debates in Congress on 
the admission of Missouri, he took strong position against any 
restriction of slavery in the new State, insisting with great 
vigor and power that, by the very terms of the Federal Consti- 
tution, the territories should, when admitted, possess all the 
rights of the original States. He went further, and added, as 
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison also thought, that it was unfair 
for the North, which had accomplished within its limits the 
emancipation and scattering of the slaves, to wall in Virginia's 
population, and thereby to confirm the continuance of slavery 
there. He was foremost and most persistent in his congres- 
sional course in holding that Congress had no constitutional 
power to legislate either for or against slavery in any territory; 
and when the Missouri Compromise measure was adopted, 
with its demarking line of 36 degrees, 30 minutes, that seemed 
to Mr. Jefferson in his old age at Monticello, "like a fire-bell 
in the night," Mr. Tyler cast his vote in the negative, with the 
profound and well-founded conviction, as against that of Mr. 
Clay and of Mr. Calhoun, that the compromise bill was an 
abject surrender of the whole situation. 

But Air. Tyler never changed his earliest judgment that a 
negro population was an evil, whether slave or free; and 
throughout his career he was a consistent opponent of the con- 
tinuance of the slave-trade, which his own State of Virginia 
had been the first constituted government in the world to pro- 
hibit in 1778. 

In 1832, as a member of the Senate committee, he inserted 
in the code of laws, prepared by him for the District of Col- 

20 



umbia, a provision prohibiting the use of the District as a slave 
mart. When President, he wrote in his message to Congress, 
June I, 1 84 1, that the highest consideration of public honor, 
as well as the strongest promptings of humanity, require a re- 
sort to the most vigorous efforts to suppress the trade; and 
again in his message of December 7, 1841, he invited the atten- 
tion of Congress to existing laws for its suppression, and 
recommended such alterations as might give them greater force 
and efficiency. Later, in 1842, he personally secured* the in- 
sertion of a clause in the Ashburton Treaty, providing for the 
maintenance and co-operation of British and American squad- 
rons off the coast of Africa for the suppression of the trade, 
and urged the ratification of the treaty upon the Senate as con- 
ducive to the abolition of what he termed the ''unlawful and 
inhuman traffic." 

As to the abolition of slavery itself, he committed it to the 
operation of time, believing that if it could not be attained by 
the deportation of the negroes as contemplated by the African 
Colonization Society, of whose Virginia branch he was Presi- 
dent in 1838, it would take place by some other means, and 
peaceably, if left free from organized assaults on the part of the 
Northern abolitionists. Indeed, an agency of this character, 
not duly recognized politically at the time, was the invention 
of the reaper by a Virginian, in Rockbridge County, Cyrus 
Hall McCormick. The phenomenal development of all kinds 
of agricultural machinery, of which this invention proved a 
stimulus, would probably have made slavery a burden upon the 
planter and have led to its final abolition. 

In the first session of the Sixteenth Congress a protective 
tariff bill was for the first time passed by the House, but re- 
jected by the Senate. Strict constructionists, like Mr. Tyler, 
believed that the sole power given by the Constitution to Con- 
gress in the fixing of tariffs was to provide thereby for the 



* See Mr. Tyler's letter in Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, p. 
240, also p. 238. 



21 



expenses of government and for the payment of the national 
debt; and that any arrangement of duties for the benefit of 
Northern manufacturers was one-sided and unfair and a usur- 
pation of a power not granted or imphed. To this tariff bill, 
Mr. Tyler made the opening objections in an argument of 
great force, which created a deep impression, though it did not 
defeat the passage of the measure in the House. 

In 182 1, on account of failing health, Mr. Tyler resigned 
his seat in the House of Representatives, and retired to private 
life. Two years later, however, he was again elected to the 
General Assembly of Virginia, and in the year following he 
was nominated for the United States Senate to fill a vacancy, 
but was defeated by ]\Ir. Tazewell. In 1824, he opposed the 
attempted removal of William and Mary College to Richmond, 
and later became successively rector and chancellor of that 
venerable institution of learning, whose earlier services in the 
cause of education and scholarship, after an entire prostration 
by the war between the States, have been renewed in the able 
administration of his son, Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, its present 
President. 

In December, 1825, Mr. Tyler was elected Governor ©f 
Virginia by the Legislature, which, down to the Constitution 
of 1850, possessed the power of gubernatorial election. He 
\\as re-elected Governor for a second term by an unanimous 
vote; but before completing this term he was sent, in 1827, to 
the United States Senate, over John Randolph of Roanoke, by 
a combination of the Clay and Adams men in the Legislature 
with the followers of William H. Crawford. 

At this point, for a better understanding of Mr. Tyler's 
career, a brief retrospect is advisable. In 18 16 the old Federal- 
ist party of Hamilton and John Adams was crushed and buried 
under the odium excited by its opposition to the War of 181 2, 
and during Mr. Monroe's administration its ancient antagonist, 
the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson, was the only 

22 



political organization in the country. Towards the end of 
Monroe's term, in 1824, this party split into various factions, 
headed by Andrew Jackson, John Ouincy Adams, William H. 
Crawford and Henry Clay. Of these Crawford was a recog- 
nized strict constructionist, and unequivocally opposed to the 
ideas then popular under the name of the American system, 
embracing internal improvements and a protective tariff. Mr. 
Tyler, along with Mr. Jefferson and the other Virginia leaders, 
favored Mr. Crawford as Monroe's successor, but he was soon 
retired from the race by a stroke of paralysis. None of the 
candidates receiving a majority vote of the Electoral College, 
the election came before the House of Representatives, which 
selected Mr. Adams by a narrow majority of one State in a 
minority vote of the members. The strict constructionists 
were inclined to favor Air. John Ouincy Adams over either 
Clay or Jackson, who were too much committed to the Ameri- 
can system. 

The charge of a corrupt bargain at this time between Mr. 
Adams and Mr. Clay, characterized by the bitter tongue of 
John Randolph as the bargain of "Blifil and Black George, the 
Puritan and the Blackleg," was never credited by Mr. Tyler, 
but he found himself the object of a not dissimilar attack on 
the part of some of the Jackson men, upon his election soon 
after as Senator over Mr. Randolph, in the assertion that there 
must have been some secret and reprehensible understanding in 
the matter between him and Mr. Clay. There was no truth in 
the charge, as there is frequently no truth in personal political 
accusation ; and Mr. Tyler believed that its object was to force 
him into some unnecessary statement or avowal, in favor of 
Jackson, which he refused to make. The scheme, if it was 
such, failed. But upon Mr. Adams taking a decided position 
in his messages for the American system, the Crawford strict 
constructionists, forced to what they regarded as a choice of 
evils, turned to Jackson, and joined in with his nationalist 
following. Mr. Tyler went along with the rest of the Craw- 

23 



ford men, and voted for Jackson in the election of 1828. The 
factions of the Democratic-RepubHcan Party crystalHzed into 
two new parties. The followers of Clay and John Ouincy 
Adams took the name of National Republicans, and the fol- 
lowers of Jackson and Crawford that of Democrats. Neither 
party admitted any kinship with the defunct Federalist Party 
of Hamilton and John Adams. Both Randolph and Tyler, 
however, declined to become partisans of Jackson, and, while 
they both supported him in the canvass of 1832, they made of 
him on this occasion, as before, a choice of evils. 

In 1829, while Senator, ]\Ir. Tyler was elected a member of 
the famous Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830, 
an assembly of which Mr. Ritchie wrote in his preface to its 
debates, and before many of its younger members had achieved 
their subsequent fame, that '"some have held it equal to the 
celebrated convention which met in Virginia in the year 1788 
to pass upon the Federal Constitution," and which numbered 
in its membership of ninety-six, two ex-Presidents of the 
Union, the Chief Justice, and many men already distinguished 
on the bench and at the bar, and included others who were then 
yet to become presidents, senators, governors, members of 
presidential cabinets, ministers abroad, and members of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 

Fie returned from this body to his seat in the Senate, and 
found a further predilection for President Jackson in the lat- 
ter's veto of the Maysville Turnpike Bill in 1830. But Jack- 
son's antagonism to internal improvements was only directed 
against roads and did not apply to water courses, and what was 
regarded by the strict constructionists as his unconstitutional 
usurpation of executive powers in favoring appropriations for 
rivers and harbors, in making partisan removals, in approving 
the protective tariff of 1832, and in removing the deposits from 
the United States Bank, resulted in the complete alienation of 
the Crawford men. 

24 



Out of the political conflicts of the period emerged "the- 
tariff of abominations" of 1828, and the protective tariff of 
1832, carried through Congress by J. Q. Adams "in perfect 
concert with the administration" * and the "Bloody Force 
Bill," in 1833. To all of these measures Mr. Tyler was alike 
opposed. And while he did not favor nullification as a remedy 
for the tariff, he denounced Jackson's famous proclamation of 
December 10, 1832, against South Carolina as "sweeping away 
all the barriers of the Constitution," and as in effect "establish- 
ing a consolidated military despotism." 

Jackson, with relentless determination, pursued his dic- 
tatorial way. A prominent congressman of Virginia, who 
said to him that he had been his friend and supporter when he 
was right, but could not go with him when he was wrong, was 
met by the characteristic reply from the President that he did 
not care for the kind of friend and supporter who would stand 
by him only when he was right, but that the friends he desired 
were those who would stand by him when he was wrong. 

Mr. Tyler, while opposed to the tariff, which on the admis- 
sion of Air. Dickerson, of New Jersey, made on the floor of 
the Senate, annually transferred from the South to the North 
$12,000,000, did not, as already stated, favor nullification; but 
when the ballot was taken on the Force Bill, investing the 
President with extraordinary powers to enforce the obnoxious 
tariff, and when all the rest of the opposition left their seats, 
he remained, and his was the sole vote in the Senate recorded 
against it on its passage. 

However, the danger of war and the almost certain at- 
tempted destruction of the Union that was threatened by the 
Force Bill were obviated by the Compromise Tariff Bill which 
Mr. Clay introduced into the Senate; and this bill in all re- 
spects was the work of Mr. Tyler. He suggested the details to 
Mr. Clay, prevailed upon him to offer it, and brought abotit a 



* Niles, Register, LXIII, p. 172. 

25 



meeting of Mr. Clay with Mr. Calhoun, who agreed to support 
it.* Thus the Union was saved; for a blow struck at South 
Carolina at this time would have united the whole South, as it 
did in 1861, when that section was relatively much weaker. 
While the Force Bill was pending, Mr. Tyler's term expired, 
and his re-election was contested by the able James McDowell, 
of Rockbridge, who was, however, defeated by him. 

The excitement over these events had scarcely subsided, 
when the passions of men were rekindled by Jackson's removal 
of the Federal deposits from the United States Bank. The Vir- 
ginia Legislature, which until Jackson's proclamation in De- 
cember, 1832, had supported his administration, was in opposi- 
tion, and her delegation in Congress with practical unanimity 
determined in caucus in favor of the restoration of the deposits 
to the bank, while public opinion in the State became over- 
whelmingly anti-Jackson. In rebuke of the President's as- 
sumptions and arrogations to himself of what they deemed a 
violation of the law, Mr. Tyler and Mr. Clay worked enthu- 
siastically with Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster in behalf of the 
Senate resolution of censure, which was adopted. 

Then came the determined effort of Thomas H. Benton to 
have this censure expunged from the journal of the Senate. 
Virginia experienced another change of sentiment, and turned 
Jacksonian; and Mr. Tyler was instructed in 1836 to vote for 
the expunction. He declined, and resigned from the Senate, 
having been honored by election as President pro tern of that 
body at the close of the session of 1834-1835. 

Out of the ruck and turmoil of it all grew a great coalition 
of many men of many minds, that became the National Whig 
Party. Its parents were the anti-tariff men and strict con- 
structionists largely located in the South, and Mr. Clay's Na- 
tional Republican Party who believed in the American System. 



* See Mr. Tyler's letter to John Floyd in William and Mary Quar- 
terly Magazine, XXI, 8-10; and Letters and Times of the Tylers, I, 456-460: 
466-67. 

26 



An analysis of the Presidential votes in the years 1836 and 
1840 demonstrates that the Southern Whigs were drawn from 
the old Crawford element of the Democratic-Republican Party. 
Gathered about this formidable alliance were others who 
had been nullifiers, and others who had been protectionists; 
while the anti-Masonic Party, that had grown up about the 
historic ]\Iasonic episode of Morgan, formed the rearguard of 
the potential though incongrous phalanx. 

Thus, while some members of the new National Whig 
Party originally favored a protective tariff, others had fiercely 
opposed it ; some had been for a United States Bank, and others 
against a bank of any kind ; some had favored internal improve- 
ments by the national government, and others had opposed, on 
the ground of unconstitutionality; and there were also some 
who continued Nullifiers in the expectation of a future success- 
ful revival of the doctrine. 

The generic appellation of "Whig" embraced all the hetero- 
genous elements thus united, and their real single bond of 
union was opposition to Jackson and the Jacksonian democracy. 
It was some years before the Whig Party attempted a formula- 
tion of principles and policies, for the obvious reason that in 
such an association there could be no agreement in any other 
thing than the one thing of making common cause against 
executive usurpation. 

In the election of 1836 no common Presidential candidate 
could be agreed upon by the Whigs. William Henry Harrison 
was the favorite candidate of the National Republican Whigs 
of the North, and Hugh L. White was the favorite of the 
State-Rights Whigs of the South ; but the Massachusetts 
Whigs voted for Webster, and the South Carolina Whigs voted 
for Willie P. Mangum. Mr. Tyler was placed upon the White 
ticket for Vice-President, and in several States upon the Har- 
rison ticket, but most of the Northern States supported Francis 
Granger. Under these circumstances, the Democrats had an 

27 



easy victory, and no one of the Whig candidates was elected. 
"The double-shotted ticket killed us," wrote Mr. Tyler to Mr. 
Wise, after the election. 

In 1838, Mr. Tyler was again sent to the State Legislature, 
and, as the martyr to the expunging resolution, was at once 
placed by his friends in nomination for the United States 
Senate, but a small faction calling themselves "Conservatives," 
led by William C. Rives, who, because of the Independent 
Treasury measure favored by Mr. Van Buren, had severed 
relations with the Democratic Party, held the balance of power 
between the Whigs and Democrats and prevented his election. 
An intrigue set on foot by Mr. Clay, by which the majority of 
the Whig vote was finally cast for Mr. Rives, was in turn de- 
feated by Mr. Tyler's particular friends, who were indignant 
at what they termed his betrayal by Mr. Clay, and the Legisla- 
ture adjourned without any election at this time. 

Before it could reassemble the great Whig National Con- 
vention assembled at Harrisburg, Pa., December 4, 1839, 
and nominated the party's first successful ticket, Harrison and 
Tyler, which was elected in the following year. The party 
made its nomination with a view to the success which it 
achieved, but, as is most significant, it promulgated no plat- 
form. 

In the light of this anomalous fact, and of the former irre- 
concilable political ideas and interests of the various factions 
from which it sprung, are to be read the accusations that were 
made against Mr. Tyler by his enemies, when after the death 
of General Harrison he succeeded to the ofifice of President, 
April 4, 1 84 1. To all such accusations of his having deserted 
Whig principles and the Whig Party during his administration 
it may be answered that his light had shone always as a beacon 
on a hill ; that he was known of all men throughout his political 
career to have been a strict constructionist and State-Rights 
advocate ; that he was bound by no pledge of political doctrine, 

28 



written or unwritten, to the incongruous party that elected 
him ; and that he discharged the duties of his high office in the 
loftiest spirit of patriotism, and according to the profound and 
mature convictions that he had always entertained in regard 
to constitutional government. 

During the Presidential canvass of 1840, the course of the 
Whig orators in the North was to talk loudly of "reform," 
and to say nothing of the old issues of bank, tariff, and internal 
improvements. In the South, where the Whig constituencies 
were practically all for State-Rights, they were strong in their 
professions against these measures. And Mr. Clay's position 
was that all the old issues had become "obsolete" in the pres- 
ence of the Federalism of the Jackson- Van Buren Democracy. 
Indeed, in a speech made in the Senate in September, 1841, 
Mr. Buchanan declared that "during the whole election cam- 
paign of 1840 he never saw one single resolution in favor of a 
national bank, which had been passed by any Whig meeting in 
any part of the country." * 

It is a notable fact that in this canvass Mr. Clay and many 
other prominent Whigs expressed in their speeches the very 
views which Mr. Tyler put into concrete effect in his vetoes of 
the bank-bills and of the tariff-bills, and it was for the first time, 
upon his veto of the Fiscal Corporation Bill, that the Whig 
members of Congress put forth, in their "Address to the Peo- 
ple," a written declaration of what purported to be Whig pur- 
poses and policies; and declaring that the President had im- 
periled these Whig measures, proclaimed that "all political 
connection between them and John Tyler was at an end." This 
pronunciamento may be attributed solely to the party domi- 
nance of Mr. Clay and of the Northern National Republican 
Whig influence in Congress. 



* The Whig Party in the South, A. C. Cole (American Historical 
Association, Washington, 1913). pages 29, 30, and seq., and authorities 
cited. Speech of Mr. Buchanan in Congressional Globe, appendix to Vol. 
X, p. 343- 

29 



Mr. Tyler took over the Harrison Cabinet, and soon was 
called to confront the currency question. He had no confidence 
in any mere bank at this time as a remedy for the financial 
troubles in the country, but he naturally desired to gratify 
the Whig leaders if possible. As he did not believe that Con> 
gress had power to create corporations in the States, he gave 
his Cabinet to understand that he would approve any bank for 
the District of Columbia, if accepted and established in good 
faith by the Whigs. Accordingly, Thomas Ewing, the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, drew a bank bill for the District, which, 
though it contained features of local discounting that were 
objectionable to Mr. Tyler, had nothing actually unconstitu- 
tional about it. But when this bill, which was known as a 
measure to establish the Fiscal Bank of the United States, was 
proposed in Congress, Mr. Clay moved to substitute for the 
clause requiring the assent of the States to the creation of 
branches another clause authorizing the bank to establish 
branches without the consent of the States. The bill passed 
Congress and was vetoed by the President, and Mr. Ewing 
admitted that "the veto was in conformity with the President's 
opinions pertinaciously adhered to in all his conversations." 

The attempt then was made to prepare another bill for what 
became known as the Fiscal Corporation of the United States, 
and on August i8, 1841, the President discussed its principal 
outlines in Cabinet. There was no written bill before them. 
At this meeting he authorized two of the Cabinet officers, Mr. 
Ewing and Mr. Webster, to confer with Messrs. Sergeant and 
Berrien, who represented the Whigs in the House of Represent- 
atives, about putting the bill in shape for Congress. Looking 
for ground to justify their desertion of the President, Ewing 
and two other members of the Cabinet afterwards asserted in 
their letters of resignation that this bill was drawn to conform 
to the President's ideas as outlined to them, and that he acted 
in bad faith in vetoing it — a charge that has been frequently 



30 



repeated in partisan works. The baseless cliaracter of the 
charge is shown from a statement of the facts. 

No evidence was ever produced that Mr. Tyler saw the bill 
before its introduction in Congress, though Mr. Ewing said 
that he "heard" that he had both seen and approved it. He 
afterwards gave the name of Mr. Webster as his informant. 
But Webster, though thus publicly mentioned, never substan- 
tiated him ; but, on the contrary, declared in a published letter 
that "he had seen no sufficient reason for the dissolution of the 
late Cabinet by the voluntary act of its members." On the 
other hand, there is the emphatic denial of the President that he 
ever saw the bill till it appeared in Congress, and when told of 
its defects he tried in every way to have it properly amended. 
His memorable words were : 'T declare under all the solemn- 
ities that can attend such a declaration, that my consent to that 
bill was never obtained." 

Neither is there any pretense of proof that Mr. Tyler was 
in any way committed to Congress or to any of its members in 
favor of the bill, for the Cabinet members admitted that Ewing 
and Webster had been cautioned by the President at the Cabi- 
net meeting "not to commit him" in their dealings with Messrs. 
Sergeant and Berrien. But the distinction is taken that the 
President, though not committed to any one in Congress, was 
committed to his Cabinet as favoring the measure. Such a 
notion of the relations of a President to his Cabinet would 
seem to be a novel one. A President's advisers are supposed 
to be a part of the President's official identity, and one of the 
chief objects of a Cabinet meeting is to discuss matters with 
a view to maturing opinions. The acceptance of the idea that a 
President in Cabinet council must be held committed to any 
chance expression he might there let fall would be destructive 
of all confidence between him and his Cabinet members. 

In this case the letters of resignation contain in themselves 
alone the strongest evidence that the President never for a 

31 



moment committed his conscience to any man's keeping. Ac- 
cording to the letter of resignation of John Bell, the Secretary 
of War, the President at the Cabinet meeting expressed "a 
wish to see the bill before it was presented to the House, if it 
could be so managed." Why should he have made this demand, 
if he had parted with his control over the bill ? He told Mr. 
Webster and Mr. Ewing that they might express to the Whig 
Committee "their confidence and belief that such a bill as had 
just been agreed upon would receive his sanction, but it should 
be a matter of inference from his veto message and his general 
views." What could he mean by this, except that he wanted to 
be consistent with his action in the Fiscal Bank Bill, and that 
he reserved the right of final judgment? How Webster re- 
garded the matter is shown by his note of August 20th, to the 
President, written after talking with Sergeant and Berrien, to 
whom he had gone in pursuance of the understanding at the 
Cabinet meeting: "I have done or said nothing as from you or 
by your authority or implicating you in the slightest degree. 
If any measure pass, you will be perfectly free to exercise your 
constitutional power wholly uncommitted, except so far as may 
be gathered from your public and official acts." This letter can- 
not be reasonably regarded as consistent with the thought that 
the President in conscience was bound in any way to his Cabi- 
net on the Fiscal Corporation Bill. 

The President himself shows that the principle of the Fis- 
cal Corporation was as objectionable as the principle of the 
bill just vetoed. It was not reconcilable with his late veto 
or his other official acts. The Fiscal Corporation was a cor- 
poration created by Congress in its national character, and not 
a local bank of the District of Columbia created by Congress in 
its character as the local legislature of the District. It dealt 
ostensibly in exchanges, but admitted a system of local dis- 
counts, which he had condemned in his late veto message and 
at the Cabinet meeting. But whether a bank of local discount 



32 



or an exchange bank, it lacked the fundamental feature of 
State assent as to branches. 

Mr. Tyler states that he had suggested to the Cabinet not 
a national bank, but a local bank of the District of Columbia 
without the discounting power of the Fiscal Bank Bill, either 
in its original shape as fashioned by Mr. Ewing, or as amended 
by Mr. Clay, and one confined to dealing in foreign exchanges. 
So far as the right of a local bank to deal in foreign exchanges 
was concerned, Mr. Tyler looked to the decision of the 
Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Bank of 
Augusta vs. Earle (13 Peters' Reports, 510), which settled the 
principle that a bank of one sovereign country authorized to 
deal in exchanges might, by the comity of nations, establish 
agencies or branches for that purpose in another sovereign and 
independent country unless prohibited by its laws from so 
doing. 

Such was the purport of his suggestions at the Cabinet 
meeting, and Mr. Tyler's account* of the matter tallies with 
the statement of one of the Whigs, Mr. A. H. H. Stuart, of 
Virginia, who admits that on August i6th, two days before 
the Cabinet met, he brought a paper containing the clause in 
regard to branches to the President, who wrote upon the mar- 
gin an amendment to meet the case in point. Under it the 
consent to branches might be taken as implied until forbidden 
by the State. This amendment differed in operation, but not 
in principle from the original requirement as to branches in 
Ewing's Bill. The difference in operation, occasioned by re- 
stricting the bill to exchanges, was a distinction founded on 
the law of nations, which law is itself founded on the consent 
of States ; but the plan gave opportunity for the bank to estab- 
lish branches more freely, and for this reason Mr. Tyler hoped 
that it would be pleasing to the Whig majority. Yet the 
Whigs seized upon Mr. Tyler's patriotic overture as an abso- 



* For Mr. Tyler's own clear and conclusive account of the Bank bills, 
see Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 66-70; 98-102. 

33 



lute surrender, and the Fiscal Corporation bill appeared in 
Congress without any limitation on the establishment of 
branches. Mr. Tyler tried to have the bill amended, and failing 
to effect this tried to have it postponed, but the Whigs, bent 
upon making an issue with Mr. Tyler before the people, ruth- 
lessly pushed the measure, just as it was, to its passage. A 
second veto followed ; all the Cabinet resigned except Mr. Web- 
ster, and the pronunciamento mentioned was issued. After 
all, the question between Mr. Tyler and the Whigs was not a 
mere one of bank and no bank, but the old one of centraliza- 
tion of power in Congress and State-Rights, of a consolidated 
nation and a confederated republic. 

Despite the decadence of State-Rights, the fact enduring to 
this day is that Mr. Tyler saved the country from a vast 
moneyed trust, and Carl Schurz declares* that "the verdict of 
impartial history will probably be that John Tyler by prevent- 
ing by his veto the incorporation of another United States Bank 
rendered his country a valuable service." The plan of a United 
States Bank in the old sense of the word, as a single gigantic 
private corporation, owning numerous affiliated banks in all 
the States and made the depositary and beneficiary of all the 
moneys of the government, may safely be said to be a discarded 
thing forever. 

Mr. Tyler, during the next two years, while the Whigs had 
a majority in Congress, received but slight support from that 
party, and was in little better case with the Democratic ma- 
jority, dominated by the Van Buren influence, when that party 
succeeded in legislative superiority. He relied upon the wings 
of either party, who were, as he had always been, the support- 
ers of State-Rights. After the resignation of the Harrison 
appointees, with the exception of Mr. Webster, who did not 
approve the conduct of the Whigs and ever remained the Presi- 
dent's warm personal friend, he filled his Cabinet with State- 



* Schurz, Henry Clay, II, 209 {American Statesmen Series). 

34 



Rights Whigs, who, like himself, had voted for Harrison, and 
two years later he included in it several State-Rights Demo- 
crats who were opposed to Van Buren. 

The steadiness with which he met these varying conditions 
was matched by his firmness in sustaining the full dignity of 
his position. He did not regard himself as President by "acci- 
dent," or "chance," or as "a Vice-President acting as Presi- 
dent," but as President by election and by the constitution. 
As such he was recognized by both Houses of Congress. Nor, 
in his opinion, simply because his active functions were depend- 
ent upon the death of President Harrison, did that event, to 
use the slang phrase of the Whigs, make him an "accidental 
President" any more than was the then Queen of England, 
Victoria, an accidental monarch, because her accession to the 
throne had been contingent on the death of her uncle, William 
IV. According to the constitution, when the Vice-President 
is elected, it is for the very purpose of his succeeding to the 
office of President, and there is no room for "chance" ; or as 
Caleb Cushing, the eminent lawyer of Massachusetts, expressed 
it, the Vice-President's succession is a "fixed fact" by the 
constitution. By his determined and fortunate stand he pre- 
served the executive from a deplorable loss of power and 
authority, and established the precedent that has been followed 
to tliis day. 

In place of the vetoed bank bills, which his opponents vainly 
sought to pass over his veto, he drafted as a substitute the 
Exchequer Bill, which was declared* by Mr. Webster in its 
significance and importance to be only inferior to the Fed- 
eral Constitution itself, and which in its character as a govern- 
ment measure, with a board of control under the supervision 
of the Treasury Department, and in its provisions to issue 
government notes and receive deposits, was a prototypef of 



* In his Faneuil Hall speech, September 30, 1842. 
t The connection was noted by Senator N. W. Aldrich, of Rhode 
Island, in a recent speech. 

35 



the recently-enacted Federal Reserve Act. When partisan 
politics occasioned the rejection of the exchequer by Congress, 
President Tyler, for the remainder of his administration, had 
the moneys of the government in what was practically his own 
private keeping, and the country lost not one dollar. 

After the currency question was disposed of, he had to con- 
front, in 1842, the equally important, if not more important, 
one of the revenue. He inherited a bankrupt treasury, which 
necessitated a public loan and a revision of the compromise 
tariff of 1833; ^^^^ ^'^^ floating the loan successfully he wished 
to pledge the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands. 
But the Whig Congress, under the leadership of Mr. Clay, 
insisted on giving this only immediately reliable fund to the 
States, and attached a rider for this purpose to the new tariff 
bill, thus uniting in the same measure two diametrically op- 
posite things — one having for its object putting money in, 
and the other, taking money from, the treasury. To effect a 
separation the President had to resort, as in the bank affair, to 
two vetoes ; and at length Congress passed, unencumbered with 
the rider, the Whig tariff of 1842, which, despite. some objec- 
tionable protective features, the President approved as a reve- 
nue measure demanded by the exigencies of the treasury. Nor 
did it disappoint his expectations, as it speedily filled the empty 
treasury to overflowing. 

The disapproval of the people of the conduct of the Whigs 
was registered in the fall elections of 1842. The Whig Party 
was swept from power, and two years later, when Mr. Clay 
was the Whig candidate for the Presidency, he was defeated. 

The confusion and clamor of these earlier political strug- 
gles have long since passed away, and in the retrospective of 
history men have come to see clearly the truths that have 
emerged from them. Of these truths there is now none more 
salient and conspicuous than that those who charged Mr. 
Tyler with recreancy to the Whig Party and its principles bore 
false witness against him. As has been said of him : "It was 

36 



impossible in the nature of things for a party composed of so 
many discordant and opposing elements to have any well- 
defined principles or determinate policy; and it was perfectly 
understood in the Harrisburg Convention, which nominated 
Harrison and Tyler, that Mr. Tyler was put on the ticket, as 
well on account of his great popularity throughout the 
country, as for his well-known anti-bank, anti-tariff, strict 
constructionist, State-Rights and anti-internal improvement 
views and principles." As General Wise truly says: "He did 
not commit himself to a Federal party or Federal opinions 
by accepting the nomination, but the Whig Party committed 
itself to Democratic principles, and selected a Democrat to 
guard them." 

At the time of the accession of Mr. Tyler to the Presidency, 
the diplomacy of England apparently contemplated an absorp- 
tion of that section of the American Continent, that lay west 
of the Mississippi River — a territory which comprised Texas, 
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, 
Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington — and which 
was claimed by Mexico, but uncontrolled by her authority. 
From this situation grew the Ashburton Treaty with Great 
Britain, negotiated, as Mr. Webster himself says :* "From step 
to step and from day to day under the President's own imme- 
diate supervision and direction," everything being first agreed 
upon in informal conferences and afterwards reduced to writ- 
ing and submitted to him for his final corrections.! And out 
of the same conditions also grew his successful procurement 
of the independence of the Sandwich Islands, now an important 
dependency of the United States. Mr. Tyler applied the Mon- 
roe Doctrine to these islands as part of this continent, and thus 
in being the first president to reach out to them the protecting 
arm of this government led the way to their ultimate acquisi- 
tion under President McKinley. 



* Daniel Webster to Lewis Cass (Niles, Register, LXIV, p. 79). 
■^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 242; III, 205-206 

37 



But the most far reaching question of this diplomacy of 
Great Britain and the United States related to Texas and 
California. As early as 184 1, Mr. Tyler had pointed out to 
Mr. Webster the significance to the United States of the ulti- 
mate acquisition of Texas, and this idea continued persistently 
with him, until its consummation was finally achieved and the 
joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress providing for 
annexation was adopted and signed by him on the last day of 
his term of office. That this great purpose was very near his 
heart, and that its ultimate accomplishment afforded him much 
satisfaction is indicated in a letter to Mr. Alexander Gardiner, 
in which he wrote, on the eve of his retirement from the presi- 
dency : "We shall leave the government and country sound 
and prosperous; and if the annexation of Texas shall crown 
off my public life, I shall neither retire ignominiously, nor be 
soon forgotten." 

Whatever the views of other Southern men, he took from 
the first, as to Texas, the broad ground of the national good — 
the monopoly of the cotton plant, the growth of the coastwise 
and foreign traffic, and the extension of the national domain. 
And that in all the manifold circumstances whch marked the 
development and accomplishment of the great measure of an- 
nexation his motives and conduct were of a high and noble 
character is confirmed by Dr. Justin H. Smith, of Boston, who, 
in his recent work, ''The Annexation of Texas" (1911), has 
subjected the whole question to the most thorough and pains- 
taking investigation. In his summary of the actions and mo- 
tives of men. North and South, both for and against the meas- 
ure, Dr. Smith declares that "among the leaders, Tyler, the 
unpopular, comes out rather the best, as so often occurs when 
conduct and principles are closely examined." By resorting to 
joint resolutions of Congress for the annexation of Texas, he 
again furnished a precedent to our own times. Although this 
method of annexation was strongly denounced as unconstitu- 
tional, especially in the North, it was later resorted to bj Mr. 

38 



McKinley, a Northern President, in effecting the annexation 
of the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands. 

Among the other achievements of his administration were 
the suppression of Dorr's Insurrection in Rhode Island, the 
settlement of the difficulties with Great Britain in the cases of 
the Caroline and Creole, the reduction of the Danish Sound 
dues (the first reduction ever made of the Danish tariff of 
1696), and the conclusion of the Seminole War in Florida ; and 
of the unfinished measures turned over to Mr. Polk, his suc- 
cessor, were the Oregon boundary and the acquisition of Cali- 
fornia and New Mexico, which questions, by a brilliant stroke 
of diplomacy, he sought informally to join under a tripartite 
arrangement between Great Britain, Mexico, and the United 
States,* and the successful conclusion of which, had his term 
of office permitted it, might have saved the country from the 
war with Mexico, and from the consequent struggles over 
slavery. As to his treatment of the Rhode Island question, Mr. 
Webster asserted that "it was worthy of all praise and one of 
the most fortunate incidents in your (Tyler's) administration 
for your own reputation." 

Great as was his constructive statesmanship in his "Ex- 
chequer" proposition, in his diplomacy as illustrated in the 
treaties negotiated with Great Britain and with China, f and in 
his acquisition to the Union of the imperial domain of Texas, 
it is no less creditable to his administrative capacity and ex- 
perience that he could truthfully proclaim as he wrote to Mr. 
Gardiner, "that he left the government sound and prosperous." 
When his term expired, there was a balance in the Federal 
Treasury of eight millions of dollars; and it is said that but one 
defaulter had been discovered during his Presidential term. 



* Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 260, 447-449. 692; III, 176, (Let- 
ter of Ben. E. Green). 

t It is r.ot generally known that when Mr. Gushing was sent to Ghina, 
he was given authority to treat also with Japan. See Letter of Mr. Tyler 
in Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 200-201. 

39 



and he for the paltry sum of fifteen dollars; while the expenses 
of government were reduced one-fourth, as compared with 
those of the preceding administration. Mr. Webster paid him 
the tribute of saying:* "that in all things respecting the ex- 
penditures of the public moneys he was remarkably cautious, 
exact and particular." 

And yet no public interest was neglected. The Navy 
Department hitherto chiefly conspicuous for its chaotic con- 
ditions was organized into bureaus with a veteran commander 
at the head of each. The naval force was augmented by two 
new squadrons — the Home and the African squadrons. The 
National Observatory was established with the eminent Vir- 
ginia scientist, Matthew F. Maury, at its head, and the first 
steps were taken towards the founding of the United States 
Naval Academy. Increased efficiency was imparted to the 
army, and the fortifications at Old Point and other places, 
virhich Mr. Tyler received in an almost dismantled condition, 
bristled when he left the government with guns and military 
equipment. He filled the important posts abroad with men 
like Everett, Wheaton, Irving, Thompson, Gushing and Payne 
— distinguished for ability and love of literature. He threw 
the influence of his office in favor of Morse and his telegraph, 
sent Fremont to discover the best path over the Western plains 
and through the mountains to Oregon, and encouraged the 
caravans of immigrants under Elijah White and others, who 
went to make their homes on the distant waters of the Colum- 
bia River. 

He had married, as his second wife, in June, 1844, Miss 
Julia Gardiner, daughter of Hon. David and Juliana Gardiner, 
of Long Island, New York, who was the mother of his two 
still living sons, the Hon. David Gardiner Tyler, ex-Congress- 
man and present Circuit Judge, and Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, the 
distinguished scholar and historian, and present President since 



* Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, II, p. 275. 

40 



1 888 of the ancient College of William and Mary. His second 
wife lies buried by his side beneath this monument. 

After leaving the White House, Mr. Tyler went to live on 
an estate in Charles City County, three miles from "Green- 
way," his father's old home and his own birthplace, and to his 
new residence he gave the name of "Sherwood Forest." Here 
he continued to dwell for the rest of his life, ceasing to take 
an active part in politics, but even in his retirement exercising 
a potent influence on public opinion in Virginia. During this 
time he was in much demand for lectures and addresses, and in 
1857 he was the orator at the celebration of the two hundredth 
and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown. Old 
enmities died away, and he acquired much of his former great 
popularity in Virginia and in other States. 

The growth of the nationalist principle in the North, as 
evidenced by the rise of the Republican Party in 1856, brought 
the country face to face with the dire results which Mr. Tyler 
had always apprehended. The two nations constituting the 
Union grew more and more unlike, and to the social, industrial, 
and economic differences formerly existing were added violent 
sectional distrust and enmity. The election of Lincoln, a 
Northern man, by Northern States and upon a platform which, 
in defiance of a recent decision of the Supreme Court, denied 
the right of a Southern man to go with his slaves into any of 
the territories secured by the common blood and the common 
treasure, was construed by the Southern States as a Northern 
monopoly of political and economic power. Deeming the 
Union under all these circumstances, to have become a positive 
failure, and asserting the natural right to independence, based 
on the vast extent of their Southern territory, and a population 
three times as great as that of the original colonies, they ap- 
pealed to the words of the Declaration of Independence and to 
their reserved rights under the Constitution, and prepared for 
peaceable separation. 

41 



In this emergency Mr. Tyler, who had a sincere attachment 
to the Union of the Fathers, repeated the part which he had 
played in 1833. He tried to save the Union by peaceful means, 
but was unsuccessful. Upon the secession of South Carolina, 
after Mr. Lincoln's election, his counsel and advice were sought 
by. his people, and he was elected to the State Convention which 
met in Richmond, February 13, 1861. He was sent as Peace 
Commissioner to President Buchanan, and it was due to his 
patriotic efforts that the Peace Convention, of which he was 
chosen President, and whose purpose was to preserve the 
Union, was called to meet in Washington, February 4, 1861. 
The result of the deliberations of this conference took shape 
in an ambiguous proposition, which Mr. Tyler opposed, and 
which the Republican Congress rejected. Realizing after this 
that all compromise was impossible, Mr. Tyler advocated the 
secession of Virginia, and on the 17th of April, 1861, was 
elected a delegate to the Provisional Congress of the Con- 
federate States, and was an active member of that body in 
Richmond. In the November following he was elected a mem- 
ber of the Confederate House of Representatives, but died on 
January 18, 1862, before taking his seat in the latter body. 

During the period that he lived after the beginning of the 
War between the States, he suggested the system of gunboats 
devised for the Confederacy; and Commodore Matthew F. 
Maury, who mentions this fact, pays him the tribute of stating 
that his death was the heaviest blow sustained by the Con- 
federate States during the first year of the war.* 

Time would fail for the rehearsal here of the opinions 
expressed of him by men of distinction and renown. Mr. 
Davis said of him that "he was the most felicitous among the 
orators he had known"; Alexander H. Stephens said that "his 
State papers compared favorably in point of ability with those 



* Official Record of the Union and Confederate Navies, Series I, Vol. 
6, p. 633- 

42 



of any of his predecessors" ; and Daniel Webster, and Henry S. 
Foote, and Henry A. Wise, and George Ticknor Curtis, and 
R. M. T. Hunter, and a host of other great men bestowed upon 
him the expressions of their admiration, respect, and regard. 

Concerning his general appearance, we have the report of 
the novelist, Charles Dickens. Recording in his American 
Notes an account of a visit to the White House, in 1842, he 
wrote of "his mild and pleasant expression" and of his "re- 
markably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable manners," 
and added that he thought that "in his whole carriage and 
demeanor he became his station singularly well." That he 
was a man of fine literary accomplishments is shown not only 
by his messages and private letters, but by his beautiful and 
eloquent addresses, among which may be mentioned his oration 
on the death of Jefferson, in 1826, his lecture at the Maryland 
Mechanics' Institute in 1855, and his discourse on the "Dead 
of the Cabinet," in 1856, in which he pays a tender tribute to 
Webster, Calhoun, Legare, Upshur, Gilmer, Spencer, and 
Wickliffe, his able associates in the conduct of the government 
of the United States. 

He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, where a large con- 
course gathered to testify their pride in his greatness and their 
sorrow for his departure ; and in his funeral obsequies city and 
State and Confederacy alike took part. 

And now the Federal Government has erected this monu- 
ment over his mortal body; but the significance of the act does 
not lie in the cost or the beauty of the monument itself. Its 
erection is unique in that it is the first monument to be voted 
by the Federal Congress to any man whose sense of duty im- 
pelled him to take sides with the South in the stormy days of 
secession. Viewed in this light, this memorial shaft to John 
Tyler is the most impressive and significant of all memorial 
structures in the United States, for it is the first in which 
both North and South have freely joined, and it stands to the 

43 



world as the sign and pledge of a reunited country, and a tes- 
timony that the passions of the past have perished. 

John Tyler, statesman and patriot, needs no eulogy. The 
austere epitome of his life and deeds can convey but an inade- 
quate conception of his courage, his ability, his steadfastness, 
and his patriotic devotion to country. His dust reposes here 
beneath this monument, and on the page of history his fame 
itself is monumental. His name has been placed there, along- 
side those of the great leaders of our epic story — of Jeffer- 
son and Madison, of Calhoun and Davis, and as long as the 
records of the republic shall endure he will be remembered and 
honored as one of its most illustrious sons. 



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